Searching for Recipes Online? Try Foodily

Earlier this year, we wrote about Google’s new recipe search feature, which is great in theory, but as a couple commenters pointed out, skews its results almost exclusively to the big recipe websites, which we don’t find very helpful.

Instead, we’ve been trying out the recipe search engine Foodily, which pulls recipes from the big names as well as blogs. Plus, the site just added a useful feature: nutrition information for every recipe!

The search results include the number of ingredients, recipe rating (if provided) and basic nutrition information for each recipe, which makes it easy to quickly assess the results. We also really like that there are nice big photos of nearly every recipe, making it even easier to scan through the list.

The new nutrition feature integrates the ingredient list of each recipe with the USDA’s national nutrient database, giving the number of calories per gram and rating the recipe as Low, Medium, or High in various nutrients like fat, sodium and dietary fiber. (The site’s developers say they chose to list the calories by gram rather than by serving because serving size varies by dish and by person.)

Of course, because the calculations are done through an automated program rather than by hand, there is the occasional odd result, but for the most part they give a helpful snapshot of each recipe’s nutritional information. (The Washington Post has an interesting article on the loopholes of the Foodily nutrition calculations, if you’re curious.)

So far we’re impressed with the wide variety of sources Foodily draws from, as well as its intuitive and attractive search features — plus the added bonus of nutrition information. When it comes to recipe searches, we might be saying goodbye to Google.